Songs that saved my life
Shortly after I turned 13 I got a phone call from my uncle. He said, "You're old enough and need to be educated. I'm coming to visit." Two hours later his car pulled over in front of our apartment building and he came out carrying two big shopping bags full of casette tapes (all bootleg, of course). He gave them to me with the words, "You need to listen to this. All of it." There was Nick Cave (almost his full discography at the time), Einstürzende Neubauten, Tuxedomoon, Diamanda Galás, The Residents... Then my uncle's friends started calling in, bringing me cassettes of their favourites - Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, obscure garage punk. Every few weeks one of them would call and say, "Hey, I've got new music for you!" And my uncle wasn't wrong. That was the emotional education that I needed then.
I'm thinking of that time, because we've been digging at that age in therapy. Lots of ugly stuff happened to me then. I was being groomed by my mom's boyfriend. My cousin, who lived next door, was found dead by an overdose in a public toilet and it came to light that she had been doing sex work. She was only 15. My grandmother had cancer, again. And just run-of-the-mill growing up shit of not fitting in at school, being queer, confused and feeling unloved. So I was struggling. And having this gift of music was one shining corridor of joy that held me together.
Waiting for that concert of Einstürzende Neubauten that got cancelled has made me revisit these old tracks and I'm thinking that perhaps I want to share some of them here. In the words of Morrissey:
A sad fact widely known
The most impassionate song
To a lonely soul
Is so easily outgrown
But don't forget the songs
That made you smile
And the songs that made you cry
When you lay in awe
On the bedroom floor
And said : "Oh, oh, smother me Mother"
No
But don't forget the songs
That made you cry
And the songs that saved your life
Yes, you're older now
And you're a clever swine
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you